Andrew Bayly

Andrew Henry Bayly (born 1962) is a New Zealand businessman, adventurer, and politician. He was elected to the New Zealand Parliament at the 2014 general election as the MP for Hunua, representing the New Zealand National Party. He is currently the MP for Port Waikato.

He is Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Minister of Statistics, and Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing in the Sixth National Government.

Early life and family
Bayly was born in Whanganui and has a twin brother. He attended Wanganui Collegiate School and graduated with a degree in accounting and finance from Massey University. He was a merchant banker and is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, the NZ Institute of Management, the NZ Chartered Institute of Corporate Management, and the UK Chartered Association of Certified Accountants.

In the 1970s, while a student, Bayly accidentally shot his brother in the leg while climbing a fence with a gun. While his brother was left with heavy scarring, his leg was saved.

Bayly was an officer in the New Zealand Army Territorials and also served in the British Parachute Regiment. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London.

Bayly is married to Tina. They have three sons.

Business career
Bayly worked as a merchant banker, founding the Cranleigh firm with his brother Paul, where he offered corporate advisory and capital markets advice to a range of government entities, local authorities and corporate clients. Cranleigh has offices in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

He was a director of numerous companies, the chair of the board of New Zealand Financial Planning and a trustee of the Enterprise Franklin Development Trust, the economic development arm of the Franklin Council.

Bayly is a former director of Envirofert, an organic compost product company that received the prestigious “Green Ribbon Award” in 2010 for making an outstanding contribution to protecting the environment. Envirofert receives around 40,000 tonnes of green waste and building products every year, and turns most of it into beneficial products, including compost and gypsum.

Adventurer
Bayly had a long career in adventure racing, including competing in three Coast to Coast events, marathons and Ironman events. He is a mountaineer and has climbed Aoraki / Mount Cook, Mount Aspiring / Tititea, and four mountains in Antarctica, including Vinson Massif, the highest mountain in Antarctica. In the summer of 2012/13 he dragged a sled 112 km to the South Pole. In 2016 he and his eldest son James each dragged sledges 120 km to the North Pole, raising $10,000 for the Kōkako Recovery Programme in the Hunua Ranges.

In January 2019, Bayly and his second son Daniel spent a month trekking 500 km across Jordan on camels, retracing the routes of Lawrence of Arabia when he worked with Arab forces during the First World War, as described in his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Living and eating as a Bedouin, Bayly was able to confirm a number of the claims made by Lawrence. However, Bayly disputed Lawrence’s claim that he could ride his camels up to 80 to 120 miles a day. Taking into account the time involved in collecting firewood and cooking and time for prayers, Bayly’s experience was that a fully laden camel could ably cover up to 50 to 80 km in a day, but only for a few days at most. Bayly’s article about their experience was published in the T. E. Lawrence Society journal, August 2019 edition.

In late December 2022, Bayly travelled to the northernmost province of Mongolia with his third son George to spend time with the Dukha people, one of the last groups of nomadic reindeer herders in the world. They spent two weeks living with a Dukha family, riding reindeer between 20-30 km a day, herding the reindeer and protecting them from attacks by wolves.

One of the aims of the trip was to raise awareness of the Dukha and the precarious nature of their lives. Climate change has adversely affected the terrain inhabited by the Dukha and has led to a decline in reindeer herds. Given the harsh realities of their life and the reducing herds, the Dukha are unlikely to continue their nomadic way of life, and the tradition is likely to die over the next couple of decades. Bayly engaged a NZ film producer and arranged for a Mongolian cameraman to accompany them to record the trip, with a view to making a documentary that will eventually be promoted overseas.

In Government, 2014–2017
Bayly was elected to Parliament at the 2014 general election, as the National MP for Hunua with a majority of 17,376 votes. He replaced Paul Hutchison who retired. He had the fourth highest majority of all electorate seats in New Zealand. During the 51st New Zealand Parliament, Bayly served as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, as deputy chair of the Regulations Review Committee, and as chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee.

In September 2016, Bayly proposed a private member's bill to Parliament that would give landlords more power to test and remedy their rental properties of dangerous levels of methamphetamine contamination. The bill would have placed an obligation on the landlord to provide rental accommodation free of methamphetamine contamination while giving them more power to confront the problem in their properties. While it was not selected for introduction, a similar bill was introduced by the National Government in 2017 and was later passed unanimously by Parliament under the Labour Government in 2019.

Bayly also successfully steered the Arbitration Amendment Bill through Parliament which passed through the House unanimously and which significantly enhanced arbitration proceedings and how they are conducted in New Zealand.

In Opposition, 2017–2023
At the 2017 general election, Bayly retained Hunua by a margin of 19,443 votes. However, National did not win the election. Bayly held various party spokesperson roles under National's four leadership configurations that term. These included building regulation under Bill English; revenue, building and construction under Simon Bridges; revenue, commerce, and state-owned enterprises under Todd Muller and Judith Collins. He was also an associate finance spokesperson under the final three leaders. In the 2017–2020 term, Bayly continued as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

In September 2019, Bayly was ejected from Parliament for attempting to disrupt Parliamentary proceedings during his questioning of Housing Minister Megan Woods about the Ihumātao dispute.

For the 2020 general election, Bayly's electorate of Hunua was disestablished. A new electorate, Port Waikato, comprising part of the old Hunua electorate and part of the old Waikato electorate, was created. Bayly contested Port Waikato and was re-elected by a margin of 4,313 votes.

Bayly was regarded as a "close ally" to National leader Judith Collins. When she reshuffled her shadow cabinet on 11 November 2020 and promoted Bayly to third rank with the positions of shadow treasurer (senior to the finance spokesperson Michael Woodhouse) and National Party spokesperson for infrastructure and statistics. This was a promotion of 14 places in National's shadow cabinet, and Bayly was described by reporters as the "big winner" in the reshuffle, but also as "relatively unknown" and "little-known". Some media comment focussed on Bayly's title of shadow treasurer, despite there being no person in the Government with the role of Treasurer to shadow, although Collins suggested re-establishing that role if National were to win the next general election. Bayly was given responsible for revenue policy, budget preparation and review, monetary policy, KiwiSaver and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. However, Bayly was criticised for being "invisible" and ineffective.

On 10 November 2021, the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill was passed. This was a member's bill in Bayly’s name, although it had been introduced by former New Zealand First MP Mark Patterson in the previous term of Parliament. The bill changes the criteria for New Zealand superannuation so that older migrants, and New Zealanders who spent large portions of their lives overseas, must wait longer to qualify.

Following the appointment of Christopher Luxon as party leader on 30 November 2021 and a subsequent reshuffle of the shadow cabinet in early December, Bayly was demoted to 15th position and given responsibility for revenue, small business, commerce and consumer affairs, building and construction, and manufacturing.

In Government, 2023–present
Bayly contested Port Waikato in the October 2023 general election, but the electorate vote was postponed to a by-election in November after another candidate died. In the interim, Bayly was elected as a list MP. He won the by-election with a margin of 11,432 votes over New Zealand First candidate Casey Costello.

In the Sixth National Government, which formed during the by-election period, Bayly was appointed as a minister outside Cabinet with responsibility for commerce and consumer affairs, statistics, and small business and manufacturing.